No doubt using DFSee from a bootable CDROM solves a few problems in case of disk problems.
Using it however, also introduces a few potential problems:

Since DFSee is started from the CDROM the current directory is read-only

This is a problem for actions that want to write files into this current directory like:

Open a logfile

Find (lost) partitions

The easiest way to get arround the problem is to change the current directory to
a location where files can be written. This can be done from the DFSee
commandline using the CD command, or from the menu using:

File -> Change current directory

Note that other things like creating imagefiles or exporting the sectorlist
will present a File-SaveAs dialog by default, so the current directory is
of less concern. It is important of course, to select a directory that
can be written to.

The bootable CDROM image emulates a diskette in drive A:

Because of this, the first or only diskette drive is accessible as B:,
or not at all if two physical diskette drives are present. Note that the
A: driveletter that will appear in the file-dialogs really represents
the CDROM bootimage and can NOT be used to save files!

Another problem related to this diskette emulation mode is that it
might not work on some (SCSI) systems because of subtle differences
in the implementation of the El-Torrito standard used.
When that happens, the symtoms might be anything from a hang during booting
to simply booting from the harddisk ...

Do note that for the floppy-emulation to work, diskette-support MUST be
enabled in the BIOS. So if you have a laptop without a diskette, do NOT turn
that BIOS support off or the CDROM will not boot either!

The CDROM is using FreeDOS and the DFSDOS executable

While all DFSee versions share the same set of commands and menu options,
and in general can perform the same actions, using a DOS environment does
place some restrictions:

Only FAT (or FAT32 with some DOS versions) are available for output files.
This means all logfiles, imagefiles and other files to be written by or accessed
by DFSee need to reside on a FAT filesystem.

DFSee will use the BIOS to access disks, so might be limited in some ways
The most common limitation is that large disks with more than 1024 cylinders
can only be accessed completely if the BIOS has working INT13 extensions.
Another is that SCSI, USB, Firewire and other non-standard disks are probably
not accessible unless they have INT13 support built in to their disk-controllers.

Note that many USB attached disks ARE now supported with DFSee since it
includes a DOS-based USB driver. However, that does not work with every
kind of PC USB-hardware and not with every USB disk device either ...

INT13 is a standard for low-level disk-services available at PC-startup time
(and later when running DOS).
They can reside in the system-BIOS, an additional SCSI on-board BIOS,
an on-board BIOS of other disk controllers or in software modules (disk-drivers)
that load as part of the operating system.
The original implementation of INT13 services have been limited to the
first 1024 cylinders of disk space (typically 7.8 GiB), but later implementations
called 'Extended INT13' have lifted that limitation.

The current FreeDOS version still seems to have some problems accessing
files deeply nested in directory structures. This is probably not much of
a problem for most DFSee usage, but it might explain some strange behavior
like not showing any directory contents in deeply nested structures while
browsing with a file-dialog.

Most users of computer systems these days are used to graphical userinterfaces
as used on Windows, MAC or even more recent Linux systems. These interfaces are
controlled using windows on your screen, a menu-system to select actions to be
performed, a mouse to point at objects on that screen and the keyboard to enter
text or commands. This offers very good feedback and reduces the chances of
making mistakes.

The other extreme, the classic interface used before the GUI's is the commandline
interface, with the screen displaying text output by the program and the keyboard
used to enter commands. This requires the users to know or learn quite a lot about
the program to be able to use all available functionality.

Since it is very hard to use a GUI program from a minimal system like a
boot-diskette, DFSee is not using any GUI at all, instead it uses a compromise,
where windows, menus, help-screens and dialogs are used but the interface is not
graphical, it is still implemented as TEXT-mode.

It its current release DFSee does use a mouse to navigate its user interface,
however, the mouse is only supported in the DOS, Windows and OS/2 versions.
When running under a GUI (text-window) like OS/2 or Windows you can use
additional mouse functionality like the clipboard, when and where supplied by the OS.

Navigating the DFSee menu

The following keys perform the basic navigation in the menu:

Enter

when just menu-headings are visible, will open the highlighted pulldown menu

Enter

when a pulldown is open, will activate or execute the highlighted menu item

Esc

when just menu-headings are visible, will close the menu and activate the commandline

Esc

when a pulldown is open, will close the pulldown

F10

when the menu is active, will close the menu and activate the commandline

F10

when the commandline is active, will activate the menu and open the default pulldown

Right arrow

when a submenu-item is highlighted in a pulldown, will open that submenu

Right arrow

when no submenu-item is highlighted in a pulldown, will move to the next pulldown

Left arrow

when a submenu is opened, will close that submenu

Left arrow

when no submenu is opened, will move to the previous pulldown

Down arrow

will move the highlight to the previous menu-item in the pulldown, and wrap arround

Up arrow

will move the highlight to the next menu-item in the pulldown, and wrap arround at the top

When only the menu-headings are visible, the first letter of each heading can be used
as a quick-select key to open that menu-heading. Almost any other key used will open the highlighted heading.
When the commandline is active the command menu x will activate
the menu and open the heading with quick-select letter x.

When a pulldown menu is open, the letters that are highlighted (yellow) can
be used as a quick-select key to activate (execute) that specific menu-item.

Context sensitive help and statusbar description

Since menu-headings and item text can be rather cryptic, additional information is supplied:

The statusbar, at the bottom of the screen, will display a full line of additional
description about the menu-heading or menu-item currently selected. This is updated
while you are scrolling through the menu.

At any time you can use the F1 function-key to get help on the currently
selected heading or menu-item. This will present you with a help-window dedicated
to the task at hand.

All information in the menu and help-system has also been extracted into
an online version, including hundreds of screenshots. You can use that to
get familiar with the many functions in DFSee.

Changing the default menu behaviour

The default behaviour of the menu will cause the menu to be present, but
without any pull-down menu opened after startup and after completing each command.
This ensures that the output from the command being executed is visible,
while having the menu available to select the next action.

The menu behaviour can be adapted to personal taste using switches on DFSee startup:

DFSxxx -menu-

Do not activate the menu on startup, and do not automatically re-activate
it after executing a menu selection

DFSxxx -M:1

Do not open submenu when using right-arrow
, instead the Enter key is required to open the submenu

DFSxxx -M:2

Do not automatically open pulldown menus
, instead an explicit key-press is required to open the pulldown

DFSxxx -M:3

Combination of -M:1 and -M:2

In the above DFSxxx stands for any of of the available DFSee executables
for OS/2, DOS, Windows, Linux, or OSX on the MAC.

The DFSDISK functionality in DFSee is based on an extensive search
of the disk(s) for any remaining partition-tables, bootsectors or
LVM related sectors. The results of this search is stored in SIX files
for every disk examined.
These files (DFSDISK*.*) are the basis for an analysis that may result
in the cration of a recovery script (.DFS) that will recreate the
missing or damaged partitions, and/or fix any other problems found.

Because of the complexity of the matter, and the many variations
is disk layout and filesystems, the analysis is NOT automatic and
requires someone knowledgable about disks, partitions and the
problems that may occur with them.
It is usually done by FSYS-software SUPPORT, and in that case
does require a valid registration, and in repeat or more
complex cases an additional support fee.

Getting the DFSDISK*.* files

To create the required analysis files you will use a standard
script that comes with the standard DFSee distributions including the CDROM.
This script requires that the current directory when running this
script is writable, and has enough space for the files
(typically e few hundred Kb per analyzed disk).

There are two ways to run the DFSee DFSDISK procedure:

DFSDISK from the menu inside DFSee

To collect the required files for one or all disks use the following menu selections:

Scripts -> DFSDISK, check Partitioning -> ... select one or ALL disks

Normally the defaults specified in the the dialog are sufficient,
however, in case nothing was found due to geometry problems, you could
change the search from 'Search cylinder boundaries'
to 'Search ALL sectors (slow!)'.
But be prepared for a LONG wait for the results, it is real slow ...

DFSDISK from the operatingsystem commandline

You would need the standard scripts *.DFS scripts that come with DFSee, plus:

For DOS or Win9x bootdiskettes DFSDISK.BAT and DFSDOS.EXE.

For Win-NT/2000/XP DFSDISK.BAT and DFSWIN.EXE

For OS/2 DFSDISK.CMD and DFSOS2.EXE

For Linux the 'dfsdisk' shell script and the 'dfsee' executable

You simply run the script-file (.BAT or .CMD) without any parameters and it will
collect SIX files for every physical disk you have. (DFSDISK*.*)
By default it will handle all disks, but you can specify parameters to
do just a single disk, or search in ALL sectors on a disk.
Use dfsdisk -? to get usage information

Analysis of the results

Based on the DFSDISK*.* information a recovery script can be created that can
simply be run from the operatingsystem command line like:

DFSxxx.exe run recover.dfs

You will most likely need assistance to do analyse the information,
and that DOES require you to have or buy
a registration, and in some cases pay an additional support fee!
If you have the wanted information collected in the files, you
can send them to DFSee SUPPORT at: support@dfsee.com
To save space, I advice to compress all the files before sending them,
for example to a single DFSDISKI.ZIP

You can create new partitions from the DFSee commandline using the CR command, see
DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu as shown above.

When using the menu, the CREATE selection opens a submenu with all available freespace areas.

Only freespace areas that are large enough, and in a proper location to contain new
partitions will be selectable. Freespace areas might not be selectable when:

They are designated 'wasted' because they are outside an existing extended container,
and/or no more primaries can be created. The limit is FOUR primaries, or one extended container
plus THREE primaries.
A primary partition can NEVER be between two logical partitions, all logicals need to be within
a single area called the extended container.

The freespace area is too small to contain a minimal size cylinder-aligned partition

Select the one you want to use for the new partition, and on ENTER you will be presented
with a CREATE specific dialog that allows you to specify all relevant information.

The CREATE dialog allows you to specify:

The kind of partition, which can be either of:

Logical partition

Primary partition

If creating either type is not possible, the option will not be shown ...

Location of the new partition, either of:

At start freespace

At end freespace

If you want to place the partition somewhere in the MIDDLE of a freespace
area, you will have to use the CR command manually, and use the '-at:' option
with a megabyte or cylinder offset.

The size in megabytes for the new partition
This will be rounded up to make the new partition align to cylinder boundaries.
In practice this may increase the specified size with up to 7 megabytes.

The partition type
The most common types can be selected directly from the selection list, and
for more obscure values you can use the 'Specify custom type value (HEX)'
selection to specify any value between 0x01 and 0xff.

Include LVM info
This option causes the LVM dialog to be activated after the partition
has been created, so you can specify the required (OS2 type) LVM information
for this partition/volume in one go.

Clear Bootsector
This option will instruct the CREATE command to CLEAR the bootsector for
the newly created partition with a 0xF6 pattern, just like regular FDISK
programs do. This avoids problems when you want to format the new partition
and the FORMAT program might pick up 'old' size values from the bootsector
instead of using the new partition size.

For recovery purposes however, you do NOT want the bootsector to be cleared!

After completing the CREATE dialog, you will get an aditional confirmation
dialog with the new partition details displayed on the screen so you can
verify them.

Find your deleted file(s) on an HPFS/NTFS/JFS partition, or find regular files
on an HPFS/NTFS/JFS/FAT partition that has become inaccessible for the operating system.
(no driveletter assigned, not 'mounted'), or that has been formatted or damaged somehow.

Recover the file-data for all or selected files to another volume (driveletter).

File-recovery or undelete in DFSee is done in several steps:

Select the partition in question

Select the partition using one of:

File -> Open object to work with -> Partition -> ...

Mode=FDISK -> Open partition to work with -> ...

Find deleted or normal files, collecting found ones in a list. Use one of:

Mode=xxx -> File Find/Recover/HEXedit -> Search deleted files => list

Mode=xxx -> File Find/Recover/HEXedit -> Search normal files => list

Mode=xxx -> File Find/Recover/HEXedit -> Other FS specific searches

Depending on the current filesystem xxx you can specify part
of the name for the file(s) to be found in the next dialog.

While searching, a reference will be added to the DFSee sector-list for every
file found that matches this partial filename and the full path+filename for
the file will be displayed together with a recovery prognosis.

Note that searching for files on a large disk, may take a very long time.
Expect between less than 1 to more than 10 minutes per gigabyte, depending
on the speed of your harddisk, the filesystem used and the amount of freespace.

Save the search result list, for later retrieval (optional):
Since searching may be time-consuming, you can save the list (EXPORT) with
results to a file, so when you need to restart, or are interrupted somehow, you can simply
read it from the file again (IMPORT). There are menu items to do that in the Actions menu:

Actions-> File and sector List -> Export sector-list ...

Actions-> File and sector List -> Import sector-list ...

For JFS, remember to rebuild the SLT after importing the list,
otherwise the path+filename info is not there resulting in rather cryptic filenames
generated out of the INODE sectornumbers.

Display the list, using a selection wildcard specification (optional):

Mode=xxx -> File Find/Recover/HEXedit -> Display files from list ...

This optional step might be useful to find out what the best wildcard is to
get exactly the file(s) you need to recover. The wildcard may describe any part
of the full path+filename displayed while searching, and it can contain multiple
wildcard-characters:

*

representing one or more characters in the path+filename

?

representing exactly one character in the path+filename

As an example: *mydocs*test?.doc

would display/recover all .DOC files with a name starting with
test plus just one character
that have mydocs somewhere in the directory path.

Recover the file-data for all or selected files to another volume (driveletter).

Mode=xxx -> File Find/Recover/HEXedit -> Recover files from list ...

This will first present a dialog where you need to specify the directory where
the filedata will be recovered to. Of course this must be a writable location with
enough freespace to hold the filedata for all files to be recovered.
In this destination directory, the files will be recreated with their full
original path and filename when available, and the data for the file is copied over.

After specifying the destination directory, the next dialog allows you to specify a
selection wildcard, exactly as with the optional display step described above.

After this the files will be recovered one by one, with progress information displayed.

For later reference and checking the results, it is advised to start a logfile
before starting the recovery procedure.

Notes specific to certain filesystems:

FAT(32)
Undelete on FAT and FAT32 may work for very small files, but will be very unreliable.
Recovering normal (not deleted) files will work roughly the same for all mentioned filesystems.

HPFS
Each component in the path and the filename will be limited
to a maximum of 15 characters due to the limited-length names as stored
in the file and directory FNODE structures.

JFS
The 'QuickFI' variants for searching are a LOT faster since they only search
the areas that are reserved for INODE storage.

It is important to add a additional step and that is to build the so-called sector-lookup-table
(SLT) which will itterate over all directories and add that knowledge (path+filename) and
makes it available for 'list' and 'recovery'.
To make thing easier, the 'search' menu-items in the JFS recovery menu
automatically start the SLT-build for you.

NTFS
On most NTFS filesystems, files to recover will be found within the first few
minutes of searching since it starts searching at the actual Master File Table (MFT).
You can abort further searching after a few minutes using the key to skip
searching the remainder of the disk, which may take hours.

Create an imagefile from the currently selected object (disk/partition)
or restore an imagefile.

Imagefiles are (binary) files that hold a complete representation of a disk-partition or even a complete disk.
Their use is in backup, system recovery and moving contents from one system to another.
In DFSee there are two main types of imagefiles:

RAW
These are one-to-one exact sector copies of the original partition or disk
in a binary file. The data is NOT compressed or changed in any way and
nothing is added to the files for identification or other purposes.

These are the kind of images that may be shared with other applications since
it is a defacto standard. It is used a lot with diskette images, but also
by Virtual-machine implementations like VPC or SVISTA as far as uncompressed
disk images are used to represent the hard-disk of the virtual PC.

Compressed
The main difference with the RAW format is that they are well,
compressed meaning smaller ...
DFSee uses a mixture of LZW and RLE compression methods to achieve maximum compression
ratio and imaging speed for 'typical' situations. In addition it may use
SmartUse filesystem information to skip unused areas of partitions
when creating or restoring imagefiles. This results in tremendous savings in
filesize and processing-time for filesystems that have lots of unused (free) space.
Currently SmartUse imaging is implemented for
HPFS,
NTFS,
JFS,
FAT,
EXT2/3,
Reiser,
and HFS+ filesystems.

Note: When you suspect that a filesystem could be DAMAGED, do NOT use
the 'smart' option for imaging or cloning since the allocation information
that is used for that may not be reliable! Use regular compression instead.

There are other properties that are useful
with Compressed images mainly but, except for the header-info, work for RAW as well:

Info header
This adds a DFSee specific ASCII header to the imagefiles, that can be very useful
to identify the imagefile in question. You can view this info quite easily using
the standard 'TYPE filename' command on the operating system commandline
or a 'view' option as offered by many filemanagers.
Adding this header can be suppressed using the -Raw option on the IMAGE command.

Note that DFSee compressed images are NOT ZIP-files! First of all, they use a slightly
different compression method, and second it is not a 'file-archive' with a directory
like regular ZIP-files are.

Size limit
This limits the maximum size of the imagefile(s) being created to the specified
size (or 2 GiB when not specified). This is useful to create files that will
fit on a diskette, a CD-R/RW or DVD or that are compatible with the maximum filesize
for the filesystem used to store the imagefiles.

Media Change
This informs the DFSee imaging process that the files will be written to
removable media (like diskette or CD-R/RW) and that it should prompt the user
to change the media involved before starting each imagefile.

Note that to write to multiple CD-R/RWs using DFSee, your CD-writer software
must support Streaming write mode, where the CD-R/RW gets a diveletter
assigned that can be written to just like any other drive.
RSJ for OS/2 or Windows is such a product, and for Windows only you can use
Adaptec Easy CD creator or Roxio DirectCD (which should allow writing to DVD's too).

For the other options use the '-?' help option on IMAGE and RESTORE

Selecting the object

Allthough you can use the "File -> Open object to work with" menu to open an object
and than create an image "from Current object", it is much more convenient to use
the available menu selections in the imaging submenu. That way all selections needed
to create the image are made from that single menu-selection plus a dialog:

Actions -> Create Imagefile(s) -> from a Disk ...

Actions -> Create Imagefile(s) -> from a Partition ...

Actions -> Create Imagefile(s) -> from a Volume (diskette) ...

For diskette-images you would use a Volume, in most other
situations you would use a Partition and in some rare cases you might want
images for a complete disk.

Creating an Image

You can create images from the DFSee commandline using the IMAGE command, see
DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu as shown above.
When using the menu, or when specifying an incomplete IMAGE command, you will be presented
with an imaging specific dialog that allows you to specify all relevant information.

Restoring an Image

You can restore images from the DFSee commandline using the RESTORE command, see
DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu using:

Actions -> Restore/Compare Imagefile(s) ...
This will present you with a combined File-Open and options dialog where
you can select an imagefile to be restored as well as any specific options.

Copy the contents of another disk/partition to the currently selected object
(disk/partition).

This will result in an exact sector-by-sector copy called a CLONE.

Selecting the object

You can use either the "File -> Open object to work with" menu to open an object
and than clone from another object "to Current object", or use the more specific
menu selections in the imaging submenu. Either way, most selections needed
are made from that single menu-selection plus a dialog:

Actions -> Clone or Compare objects -> Disk to Disk
This would be useful to make a copy of an existing disk to a new,
larger one without haveing to install everything again on the new disk.
Note that any partitions will be exact clones, NO resizing takes place.
This means the new disk, when larger, will leave you with a freespace
area at the end of the disk that you can use to create new partitions,
or to use with resizing and moving the existing partitions.

Another purpose would be cloning a DAMAGED disk (bad sectors) to
try and get as much data off it ass possible. To do this, make sure
you check the "From damaged" option in the dialog, to optimize
the cloning process for this purpose.

Actions -> Clone or Compare objects -> Partition to Partition
This is very useful to make a quick backup copy of partition
contents to an identical sized one, preferably on another disk.
Making a backup copy of your boot-partition(s) in a fully installed
and configured state, but clean of any garbage and viruses, allows
a very quick recovery in case a virus or other disaster hits.
Simply use the clone "partition to Partition" again to copy
the partition contents back ...

Actions -> Clone or Compare objects -> Volume to Volume

Actions -> Clone or Compare objects -> Disk to Current object

Actions -> Clone or Compare objects -> Partition to Current object

Actions -> Clone or Compare objects -> Volume to Current object

Performing the CLONE operation

You can clone objects from the DFSee commandline using the CLONE command, see
DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu as shown above.
When using the menu, or when specifying an incomplete CLONE command, you will be presented
with a cloning specific dialog that allows you to specify all relevant information.

Some of the options available are:

COMPARE only, verify FROM against TO
This will COMPARE the sectors of the TO and FROM objects instead of copying them,
to allow a verification of a cloning operation, or simply to see if two objects
have exactly the same contents.

Merge original data on read errors
This will leave the original data on the destination object when read-errors
happen during cloning instead of filling them with a fixed 0xFE pattern.
This can be useful to clone damaged disks that have random failures in a few passes,
or to 'merge' a freshly formatted filesystem with a damaged one containing data.

From damaged ...
This will reduce the buffersize during cloning to 1 sector, making the
operation MUCH slower but also reducing the number of sectors affected
by any read errors (bad sectors).

Exclude LVM area
This will exclude the area at the end of (OS/2 style) LVM partitions that
holds the bad-block relocation and drive-linking information.
This can be useful in recovery situations, since after cloning that
information will be invalid and needs to be recreated anyway.

First sector
You can specify to start the clone at a specific sector instead of the
start of the object. Since you can specify the start for the TO and FROM
object seperately, you can use this to MOVE data within a partition
or relative to the start of the object.

Note that the CLONE operation supports overlapping TO and FROM areas,
so it is possible to move data WITHIN a partition or other object.

Size to do
This can limit the size to be copied to a value less that the whole object.

Moving or copying a partition deals with the partition contents as well as
the partition information (partition-tables and LVM), and is the easiest way
to do this. It 'adds' functionality to the basic CLONE command.

You can MOVE or COPY partitions from the DFSee commandline using the MOVE command (and -c option),
see DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu using
one of following selections:

Actions -> Move or Copy a partition -> Copy Part to freespace area
Create a copy of the currently selected partition in a freespace
area to be selected from a submenu-list.
Only freespace areas that are large enough to contain the copy will be selectable.
The size of the partition will stay exactly the same, there is NO automatic resize.
When applicable, LVM information will be created that is derived from the old
partition, with post-fixes to make the names and IDs unique.

Actions -> Move or Copy a partition -> Move Part to freespace area
Create a copy of the currently selected partition in a freespace
area to be selected from a submenu-list, and delete the original one.
Only freespace areas that are large enough to contain the partition will be selectable.
The size of the partition will stay exactly the same, there is NO automatic resize.
When applicable, LVM information will be moved with the partition.

Actions -> Move or Copy a partition -> Move towards END of freespace
This will MOVE the currently selected partition towards the end of the freespace
area that is directly after the partition. You can specify how far the
partition should be moved, with a maximum of the freespace size.
The result will be that some or all of the freespace will now
be IN FRONT of the partition.

Actions -> Move or Copy a partition -> Move towards BEGIN freespace
This will MOVE the currently selected partition towards the begin of the freespace
area that is directly before the partition. You can specify how far the
partition should be moved, with a maximum of the freespace size.
The result will be that some or all of the freespace will now
be AFTER of the partition.

The actual copying or moving of the partition data will be done using a CLONE
command, and the required partitioning and LVM commands will be determined
and executed where needed.

Details on the procedure steps

Prepare the USB stick by removing existing data (WIPE)

Where you must make sure to select the CORRECT disk, being the memory stick!

Eject the stick, shutdown and REBOOT

Format the stick as Large Floppy

File >> Open object to work with >> Disk >> ...

Where you must make sure to select the CORRECT disk, being the memory stick!

Actions >> Format with FAT filesystem >> Current, OS2LDR.SEK Bootable

This will format the disk as a FAT16 Large Floppy with a
special bootsector by Veit kannegieser that directly starts the OS2LDR

Eject the stick, shutdown and REBOOT

Copy a minimal OS/2 system to that filesystem

Just download and unzip the
USBOOTLF archive (3 Mb ZIP)
into the root directory of the memory stick.

Add 'OS2KRNL' to the stick, and optional 'dfsee.key'

The 'OS2KRNL' needs to be at the 14.103 level or newer to
match the rest of the stuff, and must be placed in the root as well.
The 'dfsee.key' must be copied to the other DFSee stuff in \dfsee.

Final test if the stick will boot

Make sure the system BIOS is correctly set to allow booting
from USB, or use a startup function-key that lets you select
a source for booting (some laptops support that).

Note that instead of using the prepared USBOOTLF zip archive,
and adding the kernel to that, you could also use another
prepared (mini) OS/2 system, like a maintenance partition
created manually or using a tool like BootAble.
You will probably need to make updates to the 'config.sys' for
that to function, use the supplied zip, or even better the
Wiki
as a guide.

Results sofar, some 'good' sticks

I have only been testing this procedure on a Thinkpad T42p
with about ten different memory sticks. From this set
about half actually boots and works quite well.
The rest fails in different stages, either in preparation
of the stick or in the boot-process itself.

None of the sticks that work on the Thinkpad work on a
Toshiba that has a startup option for USB devices.
The USB drivers fail toload on that hardware ...

Sofar the best experience has been with 'Apacer' USB 2.0
sticks, all three variants I tried worked well. Also
a stick called 'DataBar' works well.

I have had no success with Sandisk 'Cruzer' sticks sofar, tried two ...